Fiddle City

by Dan Kavanagh

  Duffy was impressed. Willett meant him to be.

  ‘I’d bring it in by car.’

  ‘What, in the boot? Don’t make me laugh. Not when compressed cannabis resin can be shaped like fibreglass. You can get yourself a whole new car wing. Like in Goldfinger – only much more plausible.’

  ‘I’d … fly in from some unsuspicious airport.’

  ‘There aren’t any. All airports are suspicious. You might have two passports, though – one to get you to Paris and back like a weekender and one to fly you on from there to pick up the stuff. That’s quite clever.’

  ‘I’d check in two suitcases with identical sets of clothes, one with the stuff in. Then if I were stopped, I could go back to the carousel and pick up the other suitcase.’ Duffy was quite pleased with this, but Willett only chuckled.

  ‘Moses was busting them with that trick crossing the Red Sea. What about the baggage tickets? Anyway, you’re only allowed one bag each on a lot of flights nowadays. What’s more, if you did, you wouldn’t put the same clothes in each case. The case you left on the carousel would have your clothes in; the one you took through should be full of dirty knickers and Tampax spilling out when we opened it, so that it obviously wasn’t yours. How about that?’

  There was a competitive light in Willett’s eye. Duffy felt the rules of the game were a bit unfair. After all, he’d never even been in a plane, and wasn’t going to start now. He said rather grumpily,

  ‘I give up.’

  ‘They don’t.’

  No doubt Willett was trying to teach him something. No doubt he was right to try to do so. Duffy gave his friend the benefit.

  ‘So where do I look?’

  ‘I wish there was an easy answer. You look everywhere. There’s nowhere it can’t be – within reason. If it’s cannabis, then it’s bulky, you’ve got that on your side. But if it’s hard stuff … You can get half a million quid’s worth of heroin between the back light of a car and the boot. That’s where you’d have to be looking, and that’s what it’s worth to them to hide it.’

  ‘The hardest places.’

  ‘And the easiest places. And the hard–easy places. What do opium sticks make you think of? Cigarettes, right. So you wouldn’t look for them there. We had opium sticks the other month hidden inside the cigarettes in a sealed carton of duty-free Marlboro, which as far as anybody could see had been bought in transit at Frankfurt.’

  ‘Has anything changed much since I was last chasing the stuff? Like where it comes from. Is the Golden Triangle still producing as hard as ever?’

  ‘It’s a quadrangle, Duffy. Bits of Red China as well. No, the stuff’s just the same – only there’s more of it. Iran’s pretty well closed down – I suppose you have to hand that to the old Ayawhatsit. But as against that, the Pakkis have just cracked how to refine theirs much better. Their stuff used to be crummy, I expect you remember; the best was only about thirty per cent. Now they’ve made the breakthrough: it’s up to ninety, all of a sudden. Swings and roundabouts, isn’t it – except that they’re making the roundabouts go faster.’

  Duffy felt glum. Five, six, seven years ago he’d pounded up and down Gerrard Street, in and out through the Chinese area of Soho like one keen young copper. He used to imagine wizened old Chinamen in back rooms puffing dreamily away at opium pipes, only disturbed by the zealous young Duffy bursting through the door, truncheon in hand, quipping, ‘Not Rothman’s Number Two again, sir?’ It had all seemed picturesque; at first, anyway. He used to stroll along Gerrard thinking: Down these chow mein streets a man must go. None of it had hit home until a couple of years later.

  ‘Dead babies,’ said Willett sharply. Duffy looked up, and saw no longer the familiar garrulous old joker, but a serious customs officer.

  ‘Dead babies,’ he repeated. ‘I can imagine what you’re thinking, Duffy, and I’ve had it a lot of times myself. I’ll never find it, you think. What’s the point – if they want it that badly, let them have it. I catch myself going down that track sometimes, and I always stop myself before I get too far by thinking about dead babies.’ He took a swig of coffee. ‘You’ll remember there’s quite a lot of heroin goes across the border between Thailand and Malaysia? Well, couple of years ago the smugglers came up with a new system. They buy babies. Sometimes they kidnap them, but often they just buy them: they say there’s some rich, childless woman in Singapore wants to adopt a kid. Why shouldn’t a poor peasant sell one of hers; she’s got enough and some over. So the peasant sells one: seems a good opportunity, like sending the kids to college. But of course they don’t ever get to this imaginary rich childless woman in Bangkok. The smugglers kill them, take out their internal organs, and stuff them with bags of heroin. Then they give them to a “mother” who cradles them in their sleep and carries them over the border. Simple as that.’

  Duffy felt sick, but Willett hadn’t finished. ‘Of course, it’s got to look as natural as possible. So they only use babies which are under two years old – otherwise their sleeping pattern might seem unusual. And the other thing is – don’t forget this, I don’t – they always have to be got across the border within twelve hours of being killed. Otherwise the colour will have drained out of their faces and they won’t be any use.’

  Duffy didn’t need the details – he didn’t need them at all; but he knew it was good for him to have them, however sick they made him feel. Willett certainly knew how to get to him. So all he said was,

  ‘Thanks.’

  The only thing that stopped Duffy brooding at work the next day was planning his switch. From among the clients who regularly came to collect their own goods he picked out his target: a couple of pile-it-high, sell-it-cheap hifi villains. They were full of shoulder-slapping, bracelet-chinking, fell-off-the-back-of-a-lorry bonhomie, and wouldn’t think twice about anything that came their way by mistake; in Duffy’s opinion, they thought honesty was just a plant that grew in the garden.

  Their pile of hifi equipment came in to a regular bay in the shed, quite near Duffy’s corner; so far he’d always been the one instructed to load their van. In the course of the day, while seemingly doing no more than he was told to, Duffy managed to shift a small case of Japanese cigarette lighters across the shed until it was in the bay next to the hifi equipment.

  The whole of Hendrick Freight always heard them coming: they drove with the side doors of their transit van hooked back, and Capital Radio at full blast. Their arrival was the nearest thing to an event in the week of loading and unloading. If the flashier of the two was driving, he’d always look for little patches of oil on the floor of the shed, and try to put the van into a skid by stamping on the brakes.

  Towards the end of the afternoon they arrived with a roar and a squeal, backed the van up to their bay, turned the engine off but left the radio on. With a ‘Hiya, wack’ at Duffy they clattered off to flirt as successfully as anyone could with Mrs Boseley, and in the process exchange receipts with her. Duffy loaded up six boxes of tape-decks, six boxes of turntables, six boxes of tuners, six boxes of amplifiers, and one smaller case of Japanese cigarette lighters, from which he quickly ripped off the documentation: didn’t want to give them an attack of conscience, however unlikely. He stuck the lighters between the turntables and the side of the van, so that they would be invisible when Gleeson checked off his list.

  The hifi villains clattered out of Mrs Boseley’s office, Gleeson wandered over with a clipboard and checked the van, the driver shouted, ‘Didn’t forget the smoked salmon, did you, wack?’ at Duffy, who bellowed, ‘It’s under the seat’, in reply, and they roared off. What they would make of the place where the lighters were stuffed Duffy didn’t know; in all likelihood they didn’t unload themselves; there was probably an old man with two withered arms employed to do that for them.

  The lighters were due to be picked up the next day, and they were in Casey’s area of the shed; so Duffy didn’t need to worry about that. It could take care of itself.

  With the switch safely conclu
ded, and not much work for the rest of the day, Duffy started brooding again. He found himself gazing across at Mrs Boseley’s blonde hair in the glass office and thinking violent, unprofessional thoughts for which there was at present no possible justification. All because Mr Dalby occasionally snorted a little coke before screwing his hostesses, and because Willett had told him various unpleasant truths.

  Duffy’s moral outlook had always been pragmatic. Three years in the force had made it more so, and it wasn’t going to change now. He wasn’t idealistic about the law, or about how it was implemented. He didn’t mind a bit of give-and-take, a bit of blind-eye, a bit of you-naughty-boy-on-yer-bike and forget it. He didn’t think the ends justified the means – except that sometimes, just occasionally, they did. He didn’t believe all crimes were equal; some he couldn’t get worked up about. But always, at the back, there were absolutes. Murder was one, of course, everyone agreed on that. Bent coppers was one; but then, Duffy had a little private experience of that, and could be expected to feel strongly. Rape was one; Duffy was disgusted how some coppers thought it was little more than a mild duffing up with a bit of pleasure thrown in. And heroin was one as well.

  Seven years ago, Duffy had thought about sweet old Chinamen puffing away in poppy dreams; but he didn’t think of that now. And Willett hadn’t needed to push him with the dead babies, because Duffy was more or less there already, ever since Lesley. He’d laughed at the idea of Pakkis tripping over their built-up shoes, but it didn’t mean he wouldn’t cut their legs off at the ankles given half the chance. He knew all those colourful Chinese phrases they used about smoking heroin – chasing the dragon, playing the mouth organ, shooting the anti-aircraft gun – but they didn’t charm Duffy; not since Lesley.

  She had been a pretty, long-faced, serious-looking girl with dark hair and large eyes who had lived in the same block of flats as he had shortly after he’d been kicked out of the force. He vaguely fancied her but didn’t do anything about it because he was all crazy from the shock of breaking up with Carol and the best he could do at the time was trail madly back to the Caramel Club and drink too much and pick up any old rubbish and do whatever they wanted. She vaguely fancied him but didn’t do anything about it because she was a junkie.

  He remembered how avuncular, how responsible it had made him feel when she told him. He had a romantic picture of the two of them, bruised by the world, mending each other’s hurts. Then she stole his camera. She came back and told him how sorry she was, it was just a question of priorities, and weighing her need against his camera there was really no argument. He accepted it immediately, it wasn’t even a matter where he had to ‘forgive’ her or anything; he simply hadn’t realised that junkies had weak characters. Now he knew; now he’d be prepared.

  For an addict she was comparatively in control of her life. That’s to say, she started thinking about what she needed to do to support her habit at least a day before her supplies ran out. Sometimes she stole; sometimes she worked in a massage parlour; sometimes she managed to get modelling jobs. Duffy continued to like her just as much as when they’d first met. Then she stole his tape recorder; and this time she was quite a bit less sorry. Why had he left it lying around his flat like that? He knew she only had to nick his duplicate key to get at it.

  Sometimes she went off for cures which her family arranged, but always she came back. Her legs got thinner and her eyes got bigger; even the freckles on her face seemed to get bigger, stretching themselves into blotches. Her flat got filthier and her carpet began to stink. The carpet stank because when she pulled the syringe out of her arm with its residue of blood, she’d clean it by filling it up with water and then squirting it with a giggle at the patterns in the weave.

  Duffy moved away because he knew that the cure rate for heroin addicts was one in ten, and that Lesley was going to be one of the nine. He moved away because he feared doing everything he could to help and still failing. It wasn’t a decision he was proud of, but the self-obsession and weakness of addicts is catching: how can I defend myself, you begin to think after a while. He moved away because he was fond of her and didn’t ever want to hear that she had died. She was twenty-two.

  At one end of the chain there were dead babies in Thailand; at the other end there were Lesleys fixing themselves to death. She’d told him once that her one great fear wasn’t dying, but that soon she’d have nowhere left to fix. The veins in her arms had gone; the veins in her legs had gone; she was fixing in her wrists and hands at the moment, which was more painful than she’d imagined possible. Soon, she said, she’d be fixing in her groin.

  Duffy thought he’d hang around Hendrick Freight for a bit longer; just in case.

  6

  THE NEXT AFTERNOON THERE was a sudden bustle at work. Duffy was looking down the shed from his dunce’s corner when Mrs Boseley came skidaddling out of her office, pushing the door open with her right hand and still clutching the telephone in her left.

  ‘Gleeson,’ she yelled, ‘GLEESON.’

  She went back into her office and shut the door. Duffy could see her phone conversation taking a rather animated course for the next couple of minutes. Then she put the phone down, Gleeson arrived, and they closeted themselves together for a good ten minutes. After that Mrs Boseley picked up the phone again and made a call. Gleeson came out of the office and strode over to Casey’s area of the shed. Duffy concluded that things were looking up. He ambled over himself. As he arrived, Casey was ripping open the top two press-buttons of his shirt. He pointed to the CUT HERE and made a slicing motion with the edge of his hand.

  ‘Guides’ honour,’ he said, and did a wolf-cub salute to Gleeson.

  ‘Fucking look some more,’ said Gleeson.

  Duffy coughed.

  ‘Excuse me, Mr Gleeson. Anything the matter?’

  ‘Fuck off, Duffy.’

  ‘Anything I can do to help?’

  ‘Fuck off, Duffy.’

  He turned and began to wander off.

  ‘No, just a minute. Help Casey search. Two half-brains are better than one, I suppose.’

  ‘Charming,’ muttered Duffy as Gleeson marched off to consult Mrs Boseley again.

  ‘What are we looking for?’

  ‘Case of sparks.’

  ‘Ah. Get lost, did it?’

  Casey didn’t answer except by kicking a tea chest. Duffy assumed that meant Yes. Kick the tea chest for Yes; punch the packing-case for No; butt your head against the refrigerated container for Don’t Know. That was probably the local vocabulary.

  ‘Who were they for?’

  ‘Mucks.’ This was presumably Casey’s abbreviation for Muxton and Walker.

  ‘Who loaded them?’

  Casey grunted indeterminately, but Duffy already knew the answer.

  ‘Who signed them out?’

  ‘Gleeson.’

  ‘Who drove them?’

  ‘Gleeson.’

  Better and better, Duffy thought. He hadn’t counted on that bonus. Normally, if the customer didn’t collect, one of Hendrick’s two drivers delivered the goods. That day, one of them had been off sick, the other had a heavier schedule as a result, and that morning Gleeson had obviously decided to do the delivery to Muxton’s himself.

  Duffy was still pretending to help Casey look for the missing case of sparks when a bottle-green XJ6 drove into the shed and parked in the most inconvenient place. Hendrick got out, looking extremely pissed off. After ten minutes in the eyrie, he, Mrs Boseley and Gleeson all came over to the area where Duffy, Casey, and now Tan as well were pretending to search. They were only pretending now, because they’d combed the whole of Casey’s area twice and it was perfectly obvious that the sparks had flown – upwards or wherever.

  ‘Afternoon, Mr Hendrick,’ said Duffy as the three of them arrived. He was, after all, meant to be his ex-odd-job-man. ‘Sorry to hear about this spot of bother.’

  ‘Fuck off, Duffy,’ said Gleeson before his boss could open his mouth, ‘just fuck off back to your corn
er.’

  Duffy tried looking phlegmatic, as if this was the sort of way Gleeson always treated him (not that it wasn’t), in the hope that Hendrick might give his shed foreman a little talking-to about industrial relations. It was a distant hope; but Duffy’s line in such circumstances was, Anything to stir it a bit.

  As he stood in his corner he thought what he’d give for a duplicate set of invoices for the goods freighted to Dude’s. He’d taken a good scout round in the course of the day, and read lots of bits of documentation stuck to cases, and loitered for a while in the refrigerated section in case he could make out the flowers whose scent was destined to be drowned by joss-sticks; but all to no avail.

  At 5.30 he was changing by his locker when Tan came up to him.

  ‘Mrs Boseley want see you before you go,’ he said.

  Aha. A regal audience. He finished changing, and bounded up the steps to her office.

  ‘Oh, take a seat, please, Duffy. I won’t be a minute.’

  She bent over some paperwork and appeared to be adding up a line of figures. She did it once; she did it twice; then she sighed, and fished out a calculator from her top drawer. Duffy noticed that it was the same brand as the six he had left behind the cistern in the Gents, but he didn’t jump to any conclusions. Or rather, he jumped to them straight away, and then rejected them. Whatever Mrs Boseley was messing with, he guessed, it wouldn’t be just a little something to help her do her sums.

  He glanced round her office. It looked much like any man’s office, except that there wasn’t a girlie calendar. Why didn’t they make dirty calendars with men on them? All they seemed to make, if Mrs Boseley was anything to go by, was National Trust calendars.

  Hey, come on, I’ve been here ten minutes, I could be dodging the jumbos on the M4 by now. He looked out into the shed. The double doors were closed for the night. Everyone seemed to have gone home. Except for him and Mrs Boseley. What did the E stand for? Elizabeth? Elspeth? Eva? Yes, probably Eva – changed her name to that of her great heroine, Eva Braun. Dyed her hair to look as Aryan as possible. What did she want to see him for? he wondered. She couldn’t … oh no, that would be silly, wouldn’t it? That would be just too corny. Handsome lady office manager falls for muscular young manual worker. Her initial air of frostiness only a poor, sad mask to hide the feelings which lurked within her … Secretly, she longed to …